


this moment changes everything

by fawnmon (hartbeat)



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Crest Gems AU, Gen, M/M, SHIRT LIFT, Souls, glow kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25501483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hartbeat/pseuds/fawnmon
Summary: (crest gems au) the events that follow daisuke's crest of miracles first appearing on his body. a journey of self-discovery and trying to explain the glowing rock on your chest to your crazy family.
Relationships: (IMPLIED), Ichijouji Ken/Motomiya Daisuke | Davis Motomiya
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19
Collections: Daiken Discord Server, Digimon Crest Gems AU





	this moment changes everything

**Author's Note:**

> from the digimon crest gems au we made that i'm kind of freakin obsessed with. in this au, the chosen children's crests appear on their bodies in the form of glowing gems that contain their souls. daisuke's appears during 02 when he infiltrates the engine room of ken's base and the digimental of miracles appears to him. maybe one day we'll write that scene out too, but for now, here's what comes next.
> 
> if you're interested in learning more about this au (and maybe writing or drawing something for it!!), [check out the FAQ on the AO3 collection for it here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/CrestGems/profile#faq), and [check out my twitter moment full of art for the au!](https://twitter.com/i/events/1274462913588277249)

the digimental burst forth from his chest in a flash of gold light that didn’t subside once it was cradled in his hands. he was aware of a slight weight, a little pool of heat in the center of his ribcage, but he didn’t have time to investigate it. he had an abomination to defeat and a genius to save. only once that was all said and done did the glow beneath his shirt finally dim, but the feeling of it didn’t go away.

not long after, they crash-land in the woods of the real world, nearly crushing koushiro beneath them. he quickly extricates himself from the pile of children and brushes the dirt and leaves off his clothes, ushering them all to their feet and back towards the camp.

“come on everyone, jun-san is here and we’ve got to get going before she gets any more suspicious —“

“jun’s here?” daisuke stops in his tracks, one hand rising to press into his chest, into the warmth he still feels there. against his palm he feels something hard and raised under his shirt, and his breath hitches in his lungs. “wait—“

koushiro stops as well and turns to him. “daisuke-kun, is something wrong?”

“i —“ he starts, but his voice comes out small and shocked. he clears his throat. “i think i got my own crest.”

everyone stops then, turning around to stare at him. koushiro moves toward him.

“daisuke-kun,  _ you _ got a  _ crest?” _

“what, you don’t think i should have one?” daisuke glowers, taking an offended step back as his hand clutches protectively over his chest. koushiro shakes his head.

“i apologize, i just didn’t know that there were any more to get,” he says, dumbfounded. “where is it? may i see?”

“i want to see!” miyako interjects.

“show us, daisuke-kun!” takeru encourages with a grin. the digimon all clamor toward him, wooping and cheering, and even iori pitches forward on his toes, intrigued by the prospect of a brand new crest.

“give daisuke-kun some space, everyone,” hikari orders them all, fingers splaying over her own crest at her throat. “he probably hasn’t even seen it yet himself.”

daisuke gulps, nodding. he moves his hand down to the bottom of his shirt, fingers rubbing nervously at the hem of it before he pulls the whole thing up, up, all the way to his chin, blinking hard before looking down to see, for the first time, what his very own crest looks like.

in the dead center of his chest lies a large golden gem, roughly the shape of a diamond and emblazoned with the same jagged symbol seen on magnamon’s armor. he watches it tremble as he breathes shakily, eyes wide and mouth agape.

“what’s it called?” koushiro asks, observing it with great interest.

tracing its warm edges with curious fingers, daisuke thinks back to what v-mon had announced when he took on his new, golden form. 

“miracles.”

murmured awe moves throughout the group. daisuke just keeps watching the crest move in and out, in and out, on the tide of his breath.

“daisuke-kun,” hikari addresses him softly. “i know this is a lot to take in, and you might be a little scared, but, really, it’s —“

“cool!” daisuke interrupts, a big grin spreading across his face as he continues to stare down at his new crest. the golden light returns, illuminating his face with a jubilant glow. miyako breaks into incredulous laughter, and takeru joins in. chibimon starts jumping at daisuke’s feet, reaching his tiny arms out toward the gem on his partner’s chest.

“can i touch it, daisuke? i wanna touch it!”

“sure you can!” daisuke scoops him up in one arm, his other hand keeping his shirt held up over the crest. chibimon reaches out and places both paws on the gem, which glows even brighter under his touch.

“does it tickle?” he asks, poking and prodding around it.

“no,” daisuke says, a warm, floaty feeling swimming through his head. “it actually feels... kinda good.”

he looks up to see that a curious blush has risen to both hikari and takeru’s cheeks, but koushiro just looks nervous. 

“daisuke-kun, please don’t make it glow any brighter or you won’t be able to hide it from your sister.”

“hide it?” daisuke repeats in disbelief. “no way! i’m gonna get a bunch of shirts that show it off!”

as chibimon cheers his approval, takeru snorts, dropping his face to his hands. “why am i not surprised.”

“you really should cover it up now so we can go home,” hikari urges him gently. “we can figure out how to explain it to your family later.”

“eh, they won’t care,” daisuke says with a shrug.

“they won’t care?” miyako boggles. “you’ve got a big freaky gem stuck to your body, what if they take you to the hospital or something?”

“fine...” daisuke sighs, rolling his eyes at her frantic assumption before pulls his shirt back down over his crest. he doesn’t bother to tuck it back in, just cradling chibimon to his chest as the little digimon yawns and cuddles up close to the gem underneath his shirt.

he manages to fend off jun’s annoying questions long enough to get into the van with the others, and then in a miraculous turn of events she is sent to take the bus with yamato, leaving him to ride home in peace. from the backseat he can hear koushiro and taichi discussing him in sharp tones and feel them glancing over every so often, but daisuke is just as drowsy as chibimon and can’t focus enough to make out what they’re saying. his head lolls back against the seat and he sleeps through the rest of the journey home.

—

daisuke, taichi, and hikari get dropped off first at their apartment complex near the bay. daisuke and hikari, who’d both napped the whole way, are still yawning and stretching as they step out of the van, but taichi is wide awake and immediately corners daisuke against a wall once the van leaves.

“daisuke, how did you get your crest?”

daisuke blinks up at his senpai in surprise. “it just appeared while i was in the base, and gave me a new digimental to defeat chimairamon with.”

“that’s crazy,” taichi murmurs, shaking his head. “can i see it?”

daisuke lifts chibimon up to clamber sleepily onto his head and obediently pulls his shirt up again to reveal the gem embedded in his chest. taichi’s eyes sparkle as he leans in to take a good look at it, reflecting the faint golden glow that gets brighter the closer he gets. 

“i’ve never seen this symbol before,” he says, close enough now that daisuke can faintly feel his breath brush his chest, raising goosebumps across it. he feels like he’s missing more than just his shirt, like taichi’s gaze boring into his crest has somehow removed the rest of his clothes and maybe all his skin as well. “koushiro said it’s called the crest of miracles?”

“yeah,” daisuke gulps, “that’s what magnamon said.”

taichi’s hand seems to move toward him of its own accord as he continues to examine the gem, fingers reaching out toward its surface. the glow intensifies, begins to pulse. daisuke’s mouth feels dry as he eyes his hand.

“do you... want to touch it?”

“no,” taichi says quickly, pulling away. daisuke’s heart thuds behind his crest, a contradictory rhythm of relief and disappointment. taichi walks off to call them an elevator, leaving him cold.

“wait —“ daisuke shouts, yanking his shirt down over his torso again and running after taichi. he enters the elevator behind him. “i-i don’t mind!”

“you shouldn’t just let anybody touch it, daisuke,” taichi tells him, leaning against the back wall as daisuke hastily presses the button for his floor.

“why not?” daisuke whines, spinning around from the panel and nearly bumping straight into hikari, who’s just entered through the doors with tailmon at her heels. she grabs him by the shoulders to stop him before they collide, and his crest, bracketed between her outstretched arms, begins to glow through his shirt at the sudden proximity to hers. he feels a blush prick at his cheeks.

“daisuke-kun,” hikari tells him seriously. “your crest is a direct connection to your soul.” she gives him a little squeeze to emphasize her words, his light flickering in her eyes. “anyone who touches it will be able to hear your thoughts and feel your feelings. it’s not a toy.”

“i know that...” daisuke mumbles. it’s the reason hikari, taichi, yamato, and takeru hide theirs under their clothes, the reason koushiro doesn’t let anyone near the “implant” on the side of his head. but daisuke can’t feel anything but pride at the thought of baring his golden soul for all to see.

“come on, let’s get you home before jun,” taichi says as the doors ding open, and hikari lets go of daisuke, following her brother out of the elevator. daisuke trails behind, rubbing his palm into his chest to try and stifle the glow again before he sees his parents, already annoyed and tired of having to hide it after just a few hours of its existence.

“can you keep it covered for just one night?” taichi asks him when they make it to his door. “i’ll come over in the morning and talk to your parents.”

“what are you gonna tell them?” daisuke asks, frowning.

“i’ll think of something. just don’t go around flaunting it ‘till then.”

“i  _ won’t,” _ daisuke insists stubbornly, but he knows there was a distinct possibility he would have, if his senpai wasn’t being so insistent. before they leave him, hikari puts her hand on his shoulder again, gentler than before.

“good luck, daisuke-kun,” she tells him. “and congratulations.”

daisuke’s blush returns at the praise, and then he curses and starts rubbing harder at his shirt when he notices his glow has intensified yet again.

—

once the glow has subsided, daisuke goes inside, lies to his parents about how fun his “camping trip” was, consumes half his weight in junk food from the pantry, and rushes off to take a shower before jun gets home. he gets his first look at himself in the mirror while he waits for the water to heat up, and spends longer than he should just standing there in the bathroom examining his reflection, looking at his crest from every angle and swinging and flexing his arms to see how his muscles interact with it. he watches the water cascade over it the whole time he bathes, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that this thing is now and forever a part of him.

after showering he locks himself in his room, and, deeming it safe enough here to take off the shirt he’d thrown on in the bathroom, he does just that, content to just lie in bed and stare down at his new crest for the rest of the evening. 

with chibimon curled into his side, he draws his hand back and forth across the surface of his crest as it rises and falls with his lungs. he’d thought that touching it would feel alien, like it was a foreign object just grafted onto him. but instead, it’s the opposite. the crest doesn’t feel separate from him at all, rather, it somehow feels  _ less _ separate, more  _ him, _ like a purer form of himself than even his own body. when he moves his fingers from his chest to his crest the sensation of the touch is amplified, intensified, reaching somewhere much deeper than the surface of his skin. though he knows its texture is hard and smooth from when he felt it through his clothes, when touching it directly he can barely tell. it’s warm with his own body heat and feels like it has as much a right to be a part of him as the heart beating behind it.

he thinks back to what hikari said in the elevator about the crests linking to their souls. as he draws his fingers back and forth across his own, his thoughts wander to the only other one he’s touched — twice as of today — the inverted teardrop-shaped gem on the back of ichijouji ken’s neck. he remembers the contradictory flash of kindness he’d felt buried under ken’s cruelty when he’d first touched his crest in the digital world, the same kindness he’d dug out of him today with the miracle of his own, turning the gem from black to gentle pink. 

what he’d felt was ken’s soul, he realizes with reverent awe. beneath the oppressive darkness that had masked it, it had felt like a soft breeze, a swell of affection, a gentle caress on the cheek. he wonders what his own soul, nestled bright and warm at his core, might feel like to others. what it might feel like to  _ ken, _ if he ever were to return the touch. 

the thought makes him feel strangely lonely, and daisuke pulls sleeping chibimon onto his chest, inviting that comfortable haze to wash over him again and ease his troubled mind. but his heart still thuds painfully at the realization that even after rediscovering his soul, ken would not get to experience this same feeling with his own digimon because of the terrible sacrifice he’d had to make just to save his soul in the first place.

daisuke sighs, hugging his precious partner close as he nuzzles into his crest, sending pleasant tingles down his spine to combat his sadness. he just hopes he made it home safe.

—

a shout outside daisuke’s room rouses him awake.

“daisuke! taichi-kun is here to see you.”

daisuke startles upright. he must have slept in, still exhausted from his final battle with the kaiser. and now taichi is here to talk about his... crest. he looks down at it on his bare chest and has to walk his drowsy brain through a moment of “oh yeah, that is a thing now,” before another impatient shout of his name has him bolting out of bed. he almost forgets to grab his shirt in his hurry to leave, nearly botching the entire thing, but chibimon waves it sleepily after him with a hiss of “daisuke!” and he runs back to yank it on and cover his gem before stepping outside. 

bed-headed and disheveled, he greets taichi in the living room. “morning, taichi-san.”

_ “daisuke,” _ taichi says pointedly, with a nervous smile. “i was hoping we could talk to your parents together.”

he’s already wrangled both of daisuke’s parents onto the couch, and they’re looking at him with puzzled concern. 

“right,” daisuke says, then leans in toward taichi and asks, not so subtly, “how do you want to put this?”

“just follow my lead,” taichi mutters in his ear.

“what do you have to tell us, daisuke?” his mom asks, brows knit across her forehead.

“well, it’s, um —“

“something, uh, happened to daisuke on our camping trip,” taichi begins, then quickly throws his hands up to stave off any impending panic. “but don’t worry, he’s fine.”

“what happened?” his mom repeats in alarm, looking from taichi to her son. “why didn’t you tell us when you got home yesterday?”

“i was waiting for taichi-san because he knows more about this,” daisuke mumbles.

“more about  _ what?” _ his dad asks in confusion.

taichi gives him a nudge, motioning with his gaze for him to lose the shirt. daisuke sighs.

“don’t freak out.” he pulls his t-shirt over his head and balls it up nervously against his stomach, straightening up so that his crest is clearly visible on his bare chest.

his parents both gasp. jun, who was busy pouring herself a bowl of cereal in the kitchen, looks over and promptly drops the milk carton on the countertop with a splash.

“what is  _ that?” _ she practically screeches, opening the floodgates for the rest of the frantic questions to follow.

“is it some kind of  _ growth?” _

“how did this happen?”

“does it hurt?”

“should we take you to the hospital?”

...maybe miyako was onto something after all.

taichi waves his hands frantically to calm them down while daisuke just stares at the carpet, shoulders stiff, a blush dark across his face.

“seriously, it’s nothing to worry about!” taichi insists. “it’s called a crest, and it’s not dangerous at all. it’s totally benign!”

“nine of  _ what?” _ daisuke hisses.

taichi elbows him in his naked ribs and he rubs them with a frown.

“how do you know that?” daisuke’s mom asks.

taichi glances sideways at daisuke, then admits, “because i have one, too.”

reluctantly he lifts the edge of his shirt up to his sternum to reveal the orange crest embedded in his stomach, about an inch or two above his navel.

jun, hiding at a safe distance in the kitchen, gives another horrified gasp. daisuke’s parents are speechless, eyes the size of dinner plates. this, at least, gives taichi a chance to explain.

“you must remember the monster attack on tokyo big sight a few years back,” taichi says.

“we were kidnapped by bakemon,” daisuke provides helpfully, starting to catch on to the lie.

taichi nods gratefully. “i was there too. some of the kids involved had these crests appear on their bodies afterwards. just, uh... a side effect of interacting with the monsters.”

“but that was years ago!” daisuke’s dad finally responds.

“uh...” taichi glances over at daisuke. “...he must be a late bloomer.”

daisuke’s mom sits back with a conflicted sigh. “well, that’s not surprising, i guess.”

daisuke glowers, and taichi shoots him a sympathetic grin.

“wait, i was there too!” jun suddenly cries. “i’m not gonna get one of those, am i?”

“well, uh... you’re older than us, so if it hasn’t appeared already, probably not?” taichi replies weakly.

“it better not,” jun retorts, shuddering. “i don’t want a big ugly rock on my tits!”

_ “jun!” _ daisuke shouts in disgust, pulling his balled-up shirt up to his chest just as his crest starts to glow with a rush of embarrassment. 

“is that normal?” daisuke’s dad asks with a grimace, pointing out the halo of light emanating from the gem despite daisuke’s efforts to hide it.

“none of this is normal, dad!” jun whines. “why is my brother such a  _ freak!” _

“you’re the freak!” daisuke argues.

_ “you’re  _ the one with the monster tumor!”

“well, your precious  _ yamato _ has one  _ too!” _

jun shrieks in scandalized revulsion and taichi lets his shirt fall back down, dropping his face into his palm. “i think i’ve done all i can do here.”

“thanks, taichi-san,” daisuke says sheepishly as jun begins to throw a full-on fit and daisuke’s mom gets up to go comfort her. “believe me, it could have been way worse.”

“unfortunately, i do believe you. if you need any more help just e-mail me,” taichi says, shaking his head, as he moves toward the door. daisuke runs after him to open it himself, doing his best to pretend this was anything other than a disaster. the moment he closes it after him, he turns around to his family, still shirtless, and announces:

“now that you know about it, i’m not gonna hide it anymore, so you’d better get used to it!”

jun starts wailing while their mom pats her head. their dad still looks a bit stunned, sitting on the couch with a dumbfounded look on his face.

all things considered, daisuke thinks it went pretty well.


End file.
